Jill Tracy brings you the holiday season’s Night Music: a dark, evocative, and elegant netherworld that lurks within the shadow of Christmas. The San Francisco Chronicle has named singer / pianist / storyteller Tracy “the femme fatale for the thinking man.” Enter this notorious, glorious realm and fall under her dark spell.

Asking the musical question, how bleak is your Mid-winter, The Diva of Darkness is ready to make your holiday...er, um...what's the opposite of "bright"? Jill Tracy is Dark Wave's reigning goddess--dark and dramatic and very retro kitsch. Some have called her a much darker Tori Amos. She spins a web of twisted cabaret inspired by Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann. If you haven't picked up on it yet, the key word, here, is "dark."

"Silver Smoke, Star Of Night (In The Shadow Of Christmas)" arrives onOctober 16, via Projekt Records--the folks responsible for "Excelsis: A Dark Noel"--and features"Coventry Carol", "What Child Is This?" and a nine-minute version of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". More to the spirit (pun intended), Jill contributes the original "Room 19", which is about a ghost haunting an old hotel room following a 1947 Christmas Eve suicide. Yummy!

Jill claims not to have planned upon a Christmas record. These songs wished themselves into existence. “I’ve never really been into Christmas,” Jill says. “But I was completely moved, had not heard some of these songs for years. The lyrics are poignant and bleak, yet hopeful." And, making the point clearly, Jill points to the lyrics of "We 3 Kings" (the dreariness of which many collectors have long spoken about). "Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume / breathes of life of gathering gloom / sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying / sealed in the stone-cold tomb. — These are not songs merely to be sung, but tales to be told.” And tell them, she shall.

So come, all ye faithless, all you goth girls and boys, all you malcontents and children of the night and let Jill Tracy treat you to the perfect soundtrack for your Black Christmas, fulfilling all your horrific holiday nightmares...in glorious carol and song. And, if you dare, you can purchase "Silver Smoke, Star Of Night" and the 2-CD set "Ornamental" for the Holiday Twin Pack price of just $19.98 (available for a limited time).

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